Miners dropped things into the lake to appease the wilderness, Mr. Perkins said. A place to make offerings. To quell the forest. But I have not brought an offering. Only myself.

I’m nearly to the center when I see it: the change in the surface of the ice, the reflection of stars on water. A hole has been broken away in front of me.

A hole in the ice.

I inch closer to the edge of the jagged opening—spiderweb cracks fanning out around it, turning the black ice white along the veins. A hole in the ice. Large enough for a person to fall through.

Is this where Max broke through the ice and fell into the deep, hands pawing at the surface? His eyes wide while his limbs went numb—becoming useless—and the others only looked on? I try to imagine Oliver standing over him, watching as Max drew in his last breath—his chin, his eyes, dipping beneath the surface. Did Oliver stare in shock with the others? Or did they laugh side-splitting laughs? Did they want him to die?

Did Oliver want him to die?

They aren’t my friends, he said. So why was he here that night? Why was he with them?

And how did he end up in the forest?

I shuffle an inch closer, wanting to see the dark water, to imagine a person sinking, sinking, sinking, falling into a bottomless chasm, never to come back up. Never to return. Did he stare up at the pinhole of light through the broken ice, the last thing he saw before he was swallowed by the black? I shudder and take a quick step back. But my boot slides over something—something thin and shiny.

I bend down and pick it up, hold it in my hand. It’s a tiny thing, silver and glimmering. A chain. And it’s broken at one end, with a silver ring at the other.

I know what it is—and I wish I didn’t. I almost drop it, a shiver slicing up my spine, my pulse pounding against my throat.

It’s the missing chain from the pocket watch I found in Oliver’s coat.

The watch with Max’s name engraved on the back.

I close my hand around the chain, squeezing tight. The link broken and bent.

All this time, it has sat here in the center of the lake, where a boy fell into the dark water and sank.

And now I know for sure they were here. Max and the others. This is the place where he drowned. Where the chain broke and Oliver clutched the watch as if it were a prize. The one who survived.

I don’t need him to admit it, I’m already certain.

He killed Max.

My heart unspools in my chest and I tilt my head up to the sky, feeling like I might faint.

Everything is wrong.